


Strangers

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [12]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Manipulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide Attempt, Unreliable Narrator, Vomiting, being watched, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Five told them to keep an eye out for The Commission.Four months after the not-apocalypse, and Klaus finds a woman with blonde hair and red lips.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1385572
Comments: 55
Kudos: 393
Collections: Numerous OTPS Infinite Fandoms





	Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: being watched.
> 
> Big thank you to @Punknatch for the idea! And to everyone who helped me work it out!<3

Five told them to watch out for the Commission.

Following the would-be apocalypse, they had been on high alert for a new attack from them, but even now, nearly four months after it, there hadn’t been a single attack. Five seemed please to think that his attack on the Commission had wiped them out or at least made them too afraid to attack them or, the option he thought most likely, the apocalypse had simply been averted, a new timeline set, and they gave up on the apocalypse.

It had been four months of hell, really. In Klaus’ humble opinion, at least.

Four months of horrific sobriety (not including the relapse at the one month mark), four months of endless torment from the dead (except for the blissful silence at the one month mark), four months of not having Dave (except for in his nightmares), and four months of living with his siblings and traversing the foreign ground of family relationships.

So; utter hell. They were trying, and so was he honestly, and it was getting a little easier as time went on, but they still tip-toed around one another, still had arguments and fights, still said cold words and held age old grudges and wounds from one another, and they still weren’t entirely truthful with one another.

Klaus had not told anyone about Vietnam. Hazel and Cha-Cha kidnapping him had been discussed, but he had spared them all the details about his lovely torture session with them; not shown him the scars on his back or his shoulders or his chest from their beating. He did not mention Vietnam, he did not mention Dave, or the other sky soldiers, or why he went jogging nowadays when he never exercised before, even if it only made them suspicious. He understood why they should be suspicious, but besides that one slip-up at the one month mark, they had not seen Klaus high. It has been three months since he has been high.

To them.

Klaus is trying; he really, really is. But the ghosts – the ghosts are _horrible_. They get louder with sobriety and they can touch him now and Klaus can’t entirely control it. They have touched him. (Another thing he hasn’t told his siblings.) Mainly when he is sleeping, having a nightmare, and his powers lash out and they grab him and he wakes up to skeletal fingers digging into his skin and split flying over his face as they scream and they tug and pull and crush him until he snaps his powers down.

He just needs a break from it all. He can hardly sleep, and when he does it is like playing Russian roulette with his mind, deciding what bullet to shoot him with that night – one labelled Dave dying, one labelled the mausoleum, and one labelled seeing all the other soldiers die and one about seeing the people he shot die and one about the time someone held a gun to his head in the streets and used him how they wanted and one about the time he shot up and woke up to hands on him and couldn’t do anything and one about the time someone made him beg for his life because they thought he looked pretty when he was scared and one about the time-

Klaus has a lot of bad memories, to put it shortly. An infinite amount of them, and they all rear their heads at night. Sometimes Klaus doesn’t even remember them until they show up in his nightmares. And then he wakes up and the ghosts are there, trying to tear him apart, and Dave is never there, and – and –

It is too much.

So, sometimes Klaus slips up. Tiny things. Tiny little things, really, that don’t matter one bit. A little bit of powder and there are no ghosts, no fear, no pain. His body relaxes and so does his mind and sometimes he either falls asleep and doesn’t dream anything or he at least manages to get some peaceful rest in bed. And it’s not like he’s doing it every night, just – just when it’s bad. He isn’t addicted. He knows his limits. He knows exactly how much is too much, better than anyone else, and that’s why it isn’t a problem – it’s the solution to his problem.

Ben doesn’t even know. He would have confronted him by now if he did. Ben doesn’t stay in his bedroom at nights, not anymore, and the drug wears off during the night. It’s perfectly fine. He might be a bit moody the next day, missing the peace and quiet, but he knows his limits and he knows not to overdo it or go and get himself addicted again, so it’s fine. Plus, he’s always moody nowadays. How could he not be? The Academy is a slaughterhouse, always screaming, and he can’t sleep and can hardly eat and Vanya burst a lightbulb down the hallway and it sounded just like a gunshot and he freaked out and every time he looks down his hands are covered in Dave’s blood and – he’s just so fucking tired. So tired of it all. 

He knows his siblings are beginning to get suspicious of him, especially as time goes on and they trust him a little more. Klaus says suspicious, Ben says concerned. Klaus says he’s right, Ben says he’s paranoid. And, well, why shouldn’t he be? He needs to keep an eye out for the Commission (he never is, but he uses that as an excuse to hide the way he feels the need to check rooms for exits and look over his shoulder, an adopted habit from ‘Nam) and his siblings expect him to slip up at any second and the fucking ghosts are always around him –

Maybe he is a little paranoid. But he’s stressed out and exhausted all the time, so he thinks he can cut himself some slack. He just needs a break, here and there, and he’ll be fine. He is fine. He doesn’t need help; doesn’t have a problem.

(He thinks that until he punches his dealer because he says a certain word and the world smells like napalm and they’re being ambushed and he lashes out at the Charlie that grabs him and – it’s his dealer, clutching his nose and cursing, and Klaus takes the drugs he dropped and runs. Then Klaus considers that maybe he has a problem. It’s not the drugs. The drugs help, a bit.)

It is a not so good night when Klaus slips out of his window and down the fire escape, chain-smoking (his siblings let the smoking slide, considering he used to shoot up heroin) on his way to the nearest dealer he knows. Ben is probably reading a book by the fire, none the wiser. Klaus looks forwards to the night of peaceful sleep, of reality stopping, no longer bleeding into the mausoleum or Vietnam for five fucking minutes. He stamps his cigarette out as he turns the corner, excitement coiling in his stomach like an addict (he isn’t an addict though, not anymore, this might as well be prescription for him) as he approaches the shadowy figure at the back of the alleyway.

His hand fishes out the money in his pocket. He debates buying in bulk to save himself from having to go out constantly and risk being caught leaving or returning, but then runs the risk of his stash being found. But the Academy is large and the majority of it is unused. He can find a hiding space no one else will.

(He knows the moment he buys in bulk is the moment he is going to start slipping and using more than every so often, but he tells himself he won’t, because he’s not an addict. It’ll just save time and hassle and be more convenient for himself.)

“The usual,” he says, approaching the figure. “Five grams. I have the money all here.” He waves the bills in his fist and the person pushes off the wall and-

They are a lot shorter than they should be.

They step forwards, heels clicking, and a sliver of light illuminates their face.

Red lips spread out in a wide smile. “Hello, Klaus,” says the woman. “I’d love to have a chat with you.”

Klaus blinks dumbly, then he shoves the money back into his pocket. “If you’re a cop you have no proof,” he blurts, taking a step back, and the woman laughs, smoke curling from her lips. She steps forwards.

“Oh, darling, I’m no cop,” she drawls. “I’m just… a friend.”

Klaus blinks. “Of Ronnie’s?” He asks, piecing it together. Maybe he sent her out here to run this alleyway – not unheard of. He takes the money out again.

“Of you,” says the woman, pushing his hand down, and Klaus narrows his eyes.

“I don’t – money only,” he says uncertainly, but the woman only shakes her head.

“I’m not a dealer, Klaus. Come on, let’s go have a little chat, hmm?”

Klaus stares as she turns down the alleyway, hand remaining on his wrist to tug him out with her, trying to decipher who she is and what’s going down.

He decides he's probably about to get mugged or jumped, though he would have expected that to happen in the alleyway. Kidnapped, maybe? Held by a gang? He didn’t think Ronnie, his dealer, was involved in any of that, but who knows.

He tugs his hand out of her grip finally. “Who are you?” He demands, kind of pissed off. He just wants his drugs, hasn’t slept in three days, and – well, he’s always easily pissed off these days. Easy to irritate, his temper short; some days are better than others, some days he has to refrain from punching a wall, some days he can’t even do that.

(Once, Ben idly talked about how he read a psychology book and how anger and irritability were only a couple of symptoms of hyperarousal in PTSD. Klaus told him he did not have PTSD, but the sight of Dave’s blood on his hands and the sound of choppers overhead might argue differently.)

The woman turns around, her smile thin and cold. “Now, Klaus. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either we go sit down and talk this out over some coffee, or I take you back to my office.”

Klaus blinks, staring at her and flexing his hands. He looks her up and down and then his eyes catch something in her hand. A briefcase. One he is familiar with. He looks up at her face with horror slick in his stomach, and she just keeps smiling.

“You – the Commission,” he mutters, looking around, hyperaware of anyone else creeping up on him, and he staggers back.

“Hard way it is, then,” sighs the woman, and before Klaus can turn and run, she grabs his hand, clicks open her briefcase, and they’re gone.

Klaus stumbles into an office. The woman lets go of his hand and Klaus steadies himself on a desk nearby before standing up and looking around.

“You won’t get out of here,” says the woman, sitting at the opposite side of the desk. “Thanks to the stunt little Number Five played, security is up. Even if you did get out anyway, you’d be stuck here. You need one of these to get back.” She taps her briefcase with the toe of her foot, and then gestures at the chair beside him with a wide grin. “So. Sit.”

His body tells him to run, to get away, but he knows he has nowhere to go. He is trapped here and he knows it, so, tensely, reluctantly, he sits.

“What do you want from me?” He asks, digging his nails into the chair. “The apocalypse is over. You’ve lost. You’ll only lose again if you try. You know you will.”

The woman chuckles slightly, shoulders bouncing. She lights a cigar, takes a huff of it, then holds it out to Klaus with raised eyebrows. He shakes his head, eyes narrowing, and she shrugs. With smoke tumbling past her lips, she says, “oh, this isn’t about the apocalypse, though. This is about you.”

Klaus presses his lips together and she nods her head. “What about me?”

“I think I could help you.”

Klaus scoffs. “Not happening.” He rises to his feet, irritated he still had nowhere to go, and debates lunging for her briefcase when-

“I’m sure your siblings would be pleased to hear that while they’ve been trying to rekindle old relationships, you’ve been going behind their backs and snorting enough ketamine to put an elephant to sleep.”

Klaus bristles, turning back to look at her and that ever-present grin.

“Three months, now. You’ve not had any in four days and you’ve not slept in three. You need it. You’re still nothing more than an addict, and it’s almost impressive they haven’t found out. Imagine how upset they’re be. How hurt. How betrayed.”

Klaus curls his hands into fists. “I’m not an addict,” he defends bitterly. She quirks an eyebrow.

“Then why are you still using it, Klaus?” She asks, feigning curiosity. “Instead of talking to your siblings, or to a professional. Attending any meetings for recovering addicts, or therapy for that PTSD. Getting help. Moving forwards, like they’re trying to. You miss it. You want it again. You’re selfish and you don’t care about anything other than getting high.”

“I can stop,” Klaus says, tensing. “This isn’t about my family – I don’t-“

The woman sighs loudly, cutting him off. She takes another drag of her cigar and sets it aside, standing up. Klaus goes tense as she comes closer, so they are almost toe to toe, and despite being several inches taller than her, Klaus can’t help but feel unnerved and intimidated.

“I’m not doing what you want,” he states, keeping his voice level. “Now send me back home.” His siblings knowing about the drugs would… suck, big time. But it’s nothing they don’t expect already and he can make it up to them or he can explain how he needs it, just a little bit.

“Oh, but you don’t even know what I want,” she hums, poking her finger against his chest and eying him.

Klaus swallows. “What?” He asks, hesitant. She tips her head to the side, studying him.

“I think you could do better here than there. I think that I can help you get what you want.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Not even Dave?”

Klaus freezes. His blood runs cold. “W-what?” He croaks, throat suddenly tight.

“I can get you Dave back.”

Klaus can’t look at her anymore. He stares at the wall over her head, heart pounding beneath his ribs. She runs a hand down his arm, cooing. “I know that’s what you want. You can’t find his ghost. Have you ever wondered why?”

Klaus blinks rapidly, turning to watch her as she circles him. “What?” He stammers.

“Have you ever wondered that you have seen him, but you couldn’t bear the reality of it?”

“I – I don’t – what?”

She smiles sympathetically, takes his hand and reaches for her briefcase with the other one. “Let me show you something,” she says, and opens the briefcase, and-

Klaus-

Knows this place.

He knows the smell in the air; the sting in his eyes. He knows the heat on his skin, the whistle of gunshots and bombs, and-

“Medic!”

“I need a medic!”

There is a battlefield in front of him. Klaus’ hands fly to his head, covering his ears against the sound that he hears so vividly every day, and he ducks down reflexively.

“Medic! Please, god, I need a medic!”

The voice is ragged, torn, screaming. His voice.

Then everything – stops.

The woman tugs his wrist, pulling him forwards like a mother pulling a stubborn toddler along, like Reginald dragging him to the mausoleum, and Klaus moans pitiful please as they cross the frozen battlefield, crossing it right to two soldiers laying on the ground.

It is… weird, seeing himself. His face is twisted in horror and despair, and there is blood on his hands, and beneath him –

Klaus turns and retches, dropping to his hands and knees.

He tried to tell himself it was a nightmare. Nothing more than a nightmare. He would wake up soon and it would be over, but – he knew that wasn’t the case.

“Take a look, Klaus,” says the woman.

“No,” he moans, spitting on the floor and shaking his head. A hand on his shoulder forces him around, facing Dave, and he lets out an animalistic sound and screws his eyes shut for several moments, body trembling.

“Look at him,” she repeats, nails digging into his shoulder, and he whimpers slightly with the force of opening his eyes. Dave’s face is frozen in eternal pain and fear, blood bubbling out of his lips, trickling down his cheek. His eyes stare heavenward, getting more and more unfocused and distant. Klaus whimpers again and reaches out a trembling hand, cradling his cheek.

“Dave,” he sobs, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“

“Not at his face,” drawls the woman, nudging him. “Look at his chest. Look at it.”

Klaus sobs again and he has to force himself to look at the wound on his chest, that his own hands are frozen above, blood-stained.

“What do you see?” Asks the woman, crouching down beside him, and Klaus shakes his head.

“Please, stop this,” he pleads. “Please, I don’t want to see this-“

“Your Dad taught you to recognise bullet wounds,” she says. “Look at that. What’s weird above this bullet wound in Dave’s chest?”

Klaus bites his lip and screws his eyes shut against a wave of tears, then forces himself to look at it again. And-

It’s wrong.

“It’s – it’s-“ He stammers, horror creeping up on him.

“An exit wound,” finishes the woman. “Isn’t that odd? That must mean he was shot in the back.” She whistles, turning her head to look behind them.

Someone. Someone on their side shot Dave. Dave wasn’t killed by the Viet Cong. Dave – Dave – oh, god.

“But,” continues the woman. “The bullet and wound doesn’t match that of the rifles you guys use! So, Dave was shot in the back, not by the Viet Cong and not by your own men.”

She rises to her feet, grabs his wrist, and drags him after her, and he can’t resist even if he wants to cling to Dave. She storms through the soldiers around them, ducking bullets floating in the air, and then leads them through some trees and-

There is a man, there. Frozen in time like everyone else. Wearing a suit, lying next to a briefcase, using a sniper. He has grey hair. He-

“You – you killed him,” Klaus gasps, and she hums.

“Not me, not quite. But, you see, you needed to go back to your own timeline, alive. If Dave didn’t die, you never would have left. So, we did what we had to do. But do you want to know something else?”

Klaus shakes his head furiously, staggering away but her hands clamps down on his wrist and she turns to him with a feral grin.

“Number Five was an incredible agent,” she compliments. “I’d love to have him back, even if he doesn’t look like he once did. He’s fifty-eight, you know. Had nice grey hair and everything.”

Klaus stares at the man, frozen in the middle of getting up, job done. It’s –

He can’t –

“No,” he says. “No, no, no-“

“Do you ever wonder if maybe you have seen Dave, but you simply couldn’t handle the idea that your own brother killed him and he’s stuck haunting him? Forever?”

“No, no, no, I – no, he didn’t, stop it – stop-“

“Five was always very efficient in his job. Didn’t even look further than his target to realise that if he missed, he would have shot his own brother instead.”

Klaus’ hands fly up to his head, gaze pivoting rapidly between the older man frozen and Dave, himself still hovering over him, screaming for a medic. He doesn’t dare look closer at the man, doesn’t want to be able to put Five’s face to the man, doesn’t want it to sink in – but it’s true, right? Of course he did. Of course it is true.

The woman grabs him and pulls him aside, holds him in place and covers his mouth, and then everyone is moving again – backwards. The man settles onto the floor, aims his gun, the bullet flies back inside. Klaus moves away from Dave as the blood runs back into him, and he rolls him back onto his stomach, and the wound disappears, and they’re both fine. The man packs his gun up, gets up backwards, and takes two steps back and disappears – and then everything pauses and starts.

The old man appears from nowhere. He steps forwards, kneels down, sets his briefcase aside and readies his gun. Klaus laughs as Dave nudges him, a sly smile on his lips, and Klaus sobs at the sight, muffled by the woman holding him. He’s frozen and he can’t do anything but watch as the man – Five – fixes his gun up and aims. Dave grins at Klaus and shoots, ducks beneath a bullet, and Klaus cries at seeing him alive, moving again, staring at Klaus in moments he hadn’t noticed he had been looking because he had been too busy shooting. It breaks his heart.

Then Five shoots, and the bullet tears through Dave’s back and Dave goes rigid, freezing, and then slumps, trembling weakly. The world freezes just in time for Klaus to scream, closing his eyes and jerking his head away. The woman lets him go and he falls to his knees, sobbing and gagging with how hard he is crying, how sick he feels watching the moment Dave gets shot.

And then time rewinds, and plays again, and again, and again. It plays a million times over, it plays forever, until a hand grabs his wrist and he is suddenly on his knees in the woman’s office again. He falls backwards, hands flying to his face, covering his mouth as he gasps for breath, and he searches the woman out with a wild gaze.

She crouches down in front of him, head tilted to the side.

“Now that I think about it,” she murmurs. “I don’t even think your siblings would care if they found out about the drugs. Do you? They must expect it, right?”

The change of topic jars him, struggling to cope with Dave’s death and being wrenched to this other idea, so he simply sits, chest heaving, tears running down his cheeks.

“They must have noticed by now, right? Maybe they just don’t care. They’ve said that before, right? Allison, she said it in her interviews to the public. How you’re selfish and irresponsible. How you never leave that cycle. Luther always told you you were a coward, just like what you father told you, and Diego told you never to talk to him again, right? And Vanya – don’t get me started on that book. Do you think they’d care? Do you think Five would care if he knew he killed your lover? Do you think they care about you?”

Klaus blinks heavily, closing his eyes and dislodging more tears. He flinches hwen she reaches up a hand and strokes away his tears.

“I can help you, Klaus. I can help you get Dave back and get justice for him.”

“I – I don’t-“

“What? You don’t want Dave back?”

Klaus whines, shaking his head jerkily.

“You don’t think your siblings should pay for everything they’ve done?”

“No, no, please,” he breathes. He doesn’t – he doesn’t want his siblings to be hurt, and god knows what the Commission would do to them. He can recognise that she’s trying to get in his head with that, but still-

Five killed Dave, and he knows, he just knows the others are waiting for him to relapse. He knows what they think of him. But it’s a lie, right?

If it’s a lie, why has he known it for years?

The woman frowns at him, something dark flickering across her expression.

“Fine,” she says. “But don’t be surprised when you realise it’s the truth. And when you are, I’ll be waiting to help, because I’m the only one that cares.”

She grabs his arm, and with a flash of blue, Klaus finds himself in an alleyway all by himself. The one across from the alleyway he met the woman in.

He staggers to his feet, holding his arms close to himself in a mock hug.

There is someone in the alleyway across from him.

Klaus is pleased to see it is Ronnie, his dealer.

Klaus hands all of his money over to him.

###

“You look like shit.”

Klaus stares down at the pancakes in front of him. He hasn’t got an appetite at all. He still feels sick from seeing Dave die – from seeing Five kill Dave. No amount of the drugs he took last night would change that.

Klaus uses all of his motivation and energy to stab a blueberry.

“Nightmare?” Ben asks, sounding concerned.

Fake, he thinks. It’s fake. He is fake.

“Klaus, please talk to me. Seriously.”

What does he care, he thinks. He didn’t even notice Klaus take enough ketamine to k-hole in his bedroom last night, paralysed and dissociating for hours until the sun rose. He had only just managed to stop himself from taking even more as soon as it wore off and instead came downstairs before anyone else did.

“Klaus?” Ben asks again, and Klaus continues to ignore him.

His siblings slip into the kitchen one by one, eying him in surprise to see him up so early.

“Hey,” says Allison, voice chipper but still a little rough, healing. “You’re up early. How are you?”

Klaus glances up at her.

There are articles out there, from her early career. Asking her about her siblings, about Klaus being seen in rehab. She had pretended to care at first, before saying it was inevitable and that he didn’t accept help and he needed to think about others rather than just himself.

“You okay?” She asks after a moment, and Klaus – he’s so tired. He can’t even conjure up enough energy to put up a convincing façade. So he simply shrugs.

“Fine,” he mutters, sighing. His eyes flick up, bouncing to Five and then the cowering crowd of corpses behind him. He can’t see Dave there, but what if Dave could see him.

Klaus swallowed down the nausea rising up his throat.

He stands up, leaves his breakfast untouched, and leaves everyone there.

###

He can’t bring himself to look at Five. He feels sick any time he does.

Five shot Dave.

Five shot Dave.

Five shot Dave.

The mantra rings in his skull, again and again and again, driving him mad. He hears Five’s voice and he hears a gunshot and Dave choking and Dave’s blood won’t come off his hands no matter how hard he tries to rub it off.

“You should talk to the others,” Ben murmurs when Klaus comes back to himself, looking concerned. “Seriously, Klaus. You need their help; you can’t keep going on like this. The others will help.”

Klaus laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs until he cries.

At least Ben leaves him alone after that.

Klaus finds a baggie hidden under his mattress and takes what is inside it until the world slips away from him and he can’t feel a thing, can’t even feel Dave’s blood on his hands anymore.

There’s not much point in staying sober – relatively sober, as he is anyway – if he’ll never see Dave, and if he does he will be a mindless ghost following Five about.

His mind replays the scene over and over and over. Five, lying down to aim his gun. Five, pulling the trigger. Dave, choking on his own blood, dead within moments.

None of his siblings come check on him.

He isn’t surprised.

###

“Klaus, are you – are you high?”

Funny for Ben to notice now, Klaus thinks. He’s been high for nearly two days now. No one else has noticed.

It’s dark in his room. Klaus doesn’t like the dark. He can’t make himself move to turn the lights on.

“Klaus, look at me – your nose is bleeding, Klaus-“

He lets his gaze fall back to the mirror opposite him and it takes him a moment to understand what he’s seeing in it. He looks horrible. His nose is bleeding. He lifts his trembling fingers up, dabbing at the blood and staring at it on his fingertips, and it’s Dave’s, it’s always Dave’s.

Klaus lets the blood drip, drip, drip from his nose, pattering down onto his thigh while his head spins and Ben yells.

###

“You need to tell someone.”

Klaus gives Ben a tired look.

“You could have spoken to any of us!” He says, sounding both hurt and angry. “You could have – why didn’t you speak to me? If you were craving again? I would have helped, and so would the others-“

“I never stopped,” Klaus mumbles, tongue heavy in his throat. Ben blinks at him.

“What?”

“I never stopped,” he repeats, gaze slipping away. “I couldn’t sleep. So I went out and got some. It helped.”

“Klaus…” Ben murmurs, horrified. “Come on, man. You were doing so well – why didn’t you just talk to anyone?”

“I know you don’t care,” he says, tone resigned, tired. Klaus is so tired. He waits for the next hit to kick in, turning over onto his side in bed, placing his back to Ben and ignoring him as he tries to talk. “It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.”

###

“Hey.”

There is a knock at the door before it slides open. Klaus has his back to it but he still keeps his eyes closed.

“Mom’s making macaroni tonight,” says Diego, taking a few steps into his room. When Klaus doesn’t respond, he adds, “we’ve not seen you eat anything lately. Hardly seen you at all.”

Klaus is surprised they noticed. They didn’t when he had been kidnapped and sent to a war. He doesn’t respond still and Diego sighs, teetering on the threshold, debating on just walking away like usual or of trying to push him.

“Seriously, Klaus. We’re worried. You’ve not been yourself.”

He’s not been himself for a long time. It’s hard to be himself when half of himself has been murdered by his own brother.

“Klaus. Say something.”

Klaus closes his eyes and remains silent. Diego huffs.

“Fine.”

The door closes.

Klaus is glad his room is soundproof, suddenly, because a violent rage and hurt bubbles up inside of him, surprising himself in comparison to the aching despair that has left him feeling gutted and hollow.

He doesn’t quite know what happens, but one moment he is in bed, and the next there is a fire roaring in his chest, and his bedside lamp smashes against his wall, and his mirror smashes beneath his fist, and his window smashes when he throws a drawer into it. He trashes his room and comes back to himself when he’s sitting on the floor in the midst of his ruined room, fisting his hair in his hands and gasping for air between sobs, and Ben looks almost a little afraid of him.

###

Klaus doesn’t exactly clean his room, but he puts the drawers back into the dresser. He leaves his window and mirror and lamp smashed and simply makes sure not to stand on the glass or, if he does, he simply cleans his feet after, if he can be bothered. But it is in putting these drawers back that he finds something he didn’t remember even remember having.

He pulls Vanya’s book out, staring at it in his hands.

“Klaus, just put it down,” Ben requests softly. “We’re past that, Klaus. You know she regrets publishing it.”

Still. Klaus just can’t help but open it.

There are chapters on each of them individually. Klaus finds his, but he pauses.

Number Four, ‘Klaus’, Hargreeves: The Junkie.

He doesn’t remember the title. In fact, when he looks at the others’ chapters, they have their superhero names.

Number One, Luther, Hargreeves: Spaceboy.

Number Two, Diego, Hargreeves: The Kraken.

Number Three, Allison, Hargreeves: The Rumour.

Number Four, ‘Klaus’, Hargreeves: The Junkie.

Number Five, Hargreeves: The Boy.

Number Six, Ben, Hargreeves: The Horror.

Klaus’ is also the only one with his name quoted and – what is that supposed to mean? Is he not Klaus? Is he – what? He doesn’t understand. Reeled in, he starts reading and – he just –

He doesn’t remember any of this.

He remembers Vanya’s book being – harsh. But this?

It’s sickening.

Moments that she shouldn’t have even known about. And there are – photos. Cut outs, printed on; a photo of Klaus in a dumpster. A photo of Klaus asleep, or unconscious, in an alleyway. A photo of Klaus – how did she – why would she – he knows people took pictures and videos of him when they were together, and sometimes he was too high to even be aware of them doing it, but for his siblings to – to publish a – a picture of him like that-

His criminal record is there, too. She shouldn’t have that, but somehow she does. He doesn’t remember reading it the first time around. Possession, of course; plenty of possession charges, and theft, and resisting his arrests, and being a general nuisance to plenty of people. But then there’s the solicitation charges and – the junkie whoring himself out for drugs. A picture of him standing under a streetlight, but it’s obviously him and he recognises himself; the clothes, the body, the stance, the street.

There used to be – not nice things about them, but not negative things. Acknowledging a couple of things when they were younger, happier, nicer. Now? There’s just nothing. There’s the lies about Ben. There’s the selfish overdoses. There’s stealing from his siblings, stealing their money and their stuff, and laughing at them, mocking them, and getting what he deserved, being out on the streets like he was, getting himself into trouble.

And why is his name in quotes?

He just – he doesn’t understand, he can’t wrap his mind around it at all, he can’t deal with this. There are pictures and things no one else knows about him and they just – she just published them to the world, and everyone could have seen him, read those things about him.

He feels sick.

Klaus drops the book as if it burned him.

“Klaus?” Ben utters, looking confused, and Klaus –

He just –

Five killed Dave, and Vanya just – and it’s just – it’s all too much. He feels like his brain is on fire and he smells napalm and Dave is dead, dead, dead, beneath his hands, and Five did that, and he can’t – he just can’t.

Ben looks down at the book on the floor, looking disturbed, and Klaus drags his hands through his hair and pushes against his skull.

###

A week after he reread Vanya’s book, Klaus is in the bath. He isn’t high, but he wishes he was. Idly, he runs his hand along the tub, and he finds it.

Taped to the back of the tub, trapped between the porcelain and the wall; a plastic bag. He tugs it out, confused and curious, and in his hand rests a baggie of pills.

Klaus frowns at it. He… doesn’t remember buying pills. He hasn’t moved onto anything else other than ketamine. But now, he is high every night. Maybe he bought some of it and hid it. It’s the kind of place he’d hide it.

He doesn’t remember buying it, but he opens the bag, tips some pills out onto his hand, and then he rolls them between his fingers. He throws them back with ease and hides the baggie in his pillow case.

###

Klaus does not remember buying a lot of these drugs.

He does not remember buying any of them, honestly.

There are the pills on the bathtub, and then there is coke under the shattered remains of his mirror as if it had been hidden behind it. There is a baggie of molly taped to his cat mug in the kitchen. Another bag of coke taped to the underneath of the table by his chair.

He takes it, of course. Fuck only getting high at night, he gives up on that like he gives up on everything else. He just goes elsewhere; to the attic, to a random room far into the Academy, a couple of times into the basement where Luther locked up Vanya; places no one goes.

It takes him four days to realise that he did not simply forget about these drugs. He never bought them at all.

Someone put them there.

Klaus feels like he’s losing his mind.

“No one would have done that,” says Ben, hurt. “We don’t want you to relapse, Klaus.”

Ben is covering for them. Ben is a liar. Not even Ben is on his side.

“Klaus, what’s gotten into you?” His brother pleads.

Luther killed him.

Diego let his police friends arrest him.

Allison called him a selfish junkie on national TV.

Five killed Dave.

Ben, even dead, agrees with them.

Vanya exposed his entire life in her book.

They are planting drugs around the Academy. They mean for him to relapse. They don’t give a shit about him. They probably all knew about Five killing Dave; Allison probably got her little fan network to dig out all the dirty photos of him to publish. Diego could have given her his criminal record.

But Ben? Ben? Who has been by his side?

Not him, too.

“Oh my god,” Klaus moans, running his hands through his hair.

“Klaus?”

“Oh my fucking god.” He lets out a breathy laugh, shaking his head side to side. “You’re all fucking doing it. All of you! Jesus Christ, fuck.”

“Klaus, what are you talking about?” Ben asks, bewildered. “Klaus, no one’s doing this-“

“Then where the fuck are they coming from?” He snaps, brandishing the latest bag of coke he found. “I’m not buying them! I’m not!”

Ben doesn’t have an answer for him.

“That’s what I thought. Get out.”

“Klaus-“

“Get out!”

Ben staggers, looking hurt, and Klaus thinks good. He leaves, reluctantly.

Klaus falls back onto his bed, crunching the baggie in his hand and pressing his fists against his head.

He just wishes Dave were here.

Bitterly, he thinks he should just go down to Five if he wants to see him.

###

Part of Klaus debates marching downstairs and shoving the drugs in his siblings faces, demanding to know what the fuck they are doing, and part of him debates just taking them all and proving them right.

Unsurprisingly, the latter one wins.

He hardly goes on for another week before he’s finally cornered. Diego, who he had thought was on his side, comes into his bedroom.

“We haven’t seen you in ages, Klaus, come on – we’re having din-what the fuck happened to your room?”

Klaus is on the floor. He thinks his shoulder might be bleeding, due to all the glass and broken shit around his room. He’s only trashed it more since then. What does it matter?

He is, also, incredibly fucking high.

He can’t quite remember what he took. Maybe a little bit of everything. He doesn’t care.

“Klaus? Klaus – what the fuck are you doing?”

He comes down, putting a hand on his shoulder and Klaus moans, swatting at his hand and pressing himself against the glass-littered ground. “Fuck off,” he slurs, tongue heavy in his mouth

“Klaus?” He repeats. “Are you – are you fucking high right now? What the fuck?”

“Fuck you,” he hisses, gasping at pain in his back.

Diego’s hand moves from his shoulder to his wrist, yanking him upright off the floor, and then his other hand flies to his other shoulder when he just flops back down, not bothering to hold himself up. Diego drops his arm, supports his head and pries open one of his eyes.

“Jesus, you fucking are,” he says, looking – Klaus doesn’t care if he is disgusted or hurt or even pleased.

Klaus is tempted to spit at him.

“Alright, come on, family meeting time.”

He yanks Klaus upright onto his aching feet, supporting him as they go downstairs, and Klaus doesn’t try to make it any easier for him.

“Family meeting!” He hollers, dragging Klaus into the living room and all but dropping him onto the couch.

It doesn’t take long for his siblings all to get there, all being in the dining room across from the living room.

“What’s going on?” Vanya asks, feigning innocence. “Klaus – are you okay?”

Klaus laughs, staring up at the ceiling.

“Klaus, this is your time to talk to them,” Ben murmurs, gentle, and he laughs again.

“You’re bleeding,” says Allison.

“Whoops.”

“Manifest Ben,” asks Luther, a knowing tone in his voice. “Family meeting. He needs to be here.”

“Fuck him,” Klaus mutters, rolling his eyes. “I can’t.”

“You can’t,” echoes Luther. “You’re high?”

“As the moon Dad locked you on!” Klaus exclaims, clapping his hands together.

“Jesus Christ,” mutters Five, and Klaus bristles. He moves his head so he can stare his siblings down. He can’t see Five’s deadly entourage thanks to the drugs, but he looks over his shoulders nonetheless and wonders if his eyes roam over Dave.

“What do you expect?” Klaus laughs, raising his eyebrows.

“Obviously too much,” mutters someone. He can’t tell who. His shoulder twitches.

“I know you were just waiting for it,” he snaps, glaring at them with wild eyes. “Just watching, and waiting, huh? You’ve probably known for months, right?”

“What?” Asks Diego, eyes widening. “How long have you been using again?”

Klaus barks a harsh laugh. “Don’t act so shocked,” he scolds. “As soon as I found them! What did you expect? That’s what you wanted.”

Luther opens his mouth to speak, but Five cuts him off.

“What do you mean found, Klaus?” He asks, eyes narrowed. Klaus digs his nails into his knees, grinds his teeth together. The fireplace is lit; it flickers in the corner of his eye distractingly. The living room smells like napalm and he looks wildly around the place, sniffling and wiping his nose, but the smell remains.

“What do you think?” He snickers, scratching his leg. “I found them. The pills on the bath, and the coke under the table, and the molly in the cup – I found them where you fucking put them!” He spreads his hands out in front of himself. They shake. He turns his gaze to Vanya. “Proved your point, though; I’d take random pills in a random bathroom without a second thought. I’ve not checked the toilet seat, but I’d take those too, you’re also right on that.”

Vanya’s eyebrows furrow and she looks between them all. “I didn’t – I didn’t say that, Klaus-“

Klaus laughs, high-pitched and airy. “Yes, you did! In your book!”

Vanya visibly recoils at the mention of her book, cheeks flushing red, but then she shakes her head. “Klaus, I didn’t say that,” she repeats.

“Oh, yes you did,” Klaus insists. “I read it! That was the nicest thing you said about me, my dear.” He gives a tense grin, a flutter of his eyelashes, and Vanya looks a bit disturbed.

“Klaus,” says Five, a little suspicious, always so fucking suspicious. What are you talking about?”

Five killed Dave. Five killed Dave. Five killed Dave. The fireplace roars. A village goes up in smoke and Klaus flinches, bringing one hand up to cradle the side of his head and block the sight of the fire out. He grits his teeth, breathes raggedly, and doesn’t smile so much as grimace.

“Oh, are you more interested in the gritty stuff?” He asks, and his eyes swivel to Diego. “Well, you gave her my fucking records, right? Let your mind run wild!” He says, eyebrows lifting.

“What?” Diego asks, frowning. “What records?”

“The criminal ones, dear! You gave her my criminal records so she could tell the whole world! Oh, but she found pictures, too – did you help her with that? Get your agents to bribe my exes for them?” He turns his attention now to Allison, who recoils a little beneath his attention.

“What are you talking about?” Allison asks, and Klaus’ smile, if it can be called that, drops heavily.

“Alright,” he mutters, shimmying to the edge of the couch. “Fine. Fine! I’ll fucking get it for you! You want a family meeting, you want to talk, then let’s talk, yeah?”

He rises unsteadily onto his feet, swaying and almost falling over, head tingling with his high. Diego reaches a hand out to steady him but he gives him a look wild enough to make him back off.

He gathers himself and begins to shove himself forwards on unsteady legs towards the stairs and his siblings follow, all looking disturbed and upset, as if seeing Klaus stumble and mutter and sway and struggle his way up the stairs is showing them a whole new side to the drugs they didn’t think of before – as if they didn’t know it was more than dancing and clubs and sex and fun.

When he takes them to his mess of a room, they all gasp (save for Diego, who already saw it) and he stumbles through it, not acknowledging the new stabs of pain in his bare feet when broken glass stabs into him. He drops onto his knees by his half-broke dresser and begins shuffling through the drawers, going for the one he knows has her book in it, ready to prove them wrong –

But all he finds is drugs.

He frowns, shoving aside baggie after baggie, growing more frantic. His siblings look even more disturbed to see how many bags are there, and he doesn’t even remember finding half of these, and he feels like he really is going insane because where is the book?

“No, no, no,” he mutters, shaking his head. He pulls a drawer out and empties it, rummages through the content and throws the actual drawer aside. He looks in the empty slot for it, running his hands along it, and then goes to the next drawer and does the same, and he keeps going until he is eventually just pulling apart his dresser.

“Klaus,” says Diego, stepping forwards. “Klaus, come on, just stop-“

“Don’t touch me!” Klaus snaps, throwing himself backwards. “Don’t – fucking touch me!”

“Klaus,” he says, voice careful, reminiscent of all the times Klaus has been off his face and Diego has found him and tried to reason with him – but Klaus isn’t off his face, he isn’t irrational, he knows what’s going on and they can’t keep lying to him, he knows now- “you’re high, Klaus. Okay? Come on, you can sleep it off in the infirmary and Mom’ll help with the withdrawals-“

“You moved it,” he mutters, horrified. “You moved it, oh my god, you moved it.”

“We didn’t touch anything, Klaus,” says Five, taking a step forwards, and Klaus’ eyes snap onto him properly for the first time properly in a while. Klaus’ face screws up and he remembers Dave, body jerking as Five’s bullet tore through him.

“She told me,” Klaus says, voice hollow. “She told me what you did.”

Five frowns, eyebrows furrowed. “Who told you what, Klaus? You aren’t making sense.”

A laugh bubbles up in his chest. “Yes, you do,” he says, nodding. His eyes sting. “The woman. She told me what you did.”

“Klaus-“ Five takes another step forwards and Klaus throws himself up onto his feet to stagger back, back, back, until a mirror crunches under his foot and his back hits the wall beside his broken window.

“The Commission!” He blurts. “She told me!”

Five freezes. (Because he knows he’s just been caught red-handed.)

“Who is she, Klaus?”

Klaus’ fingers scratch idly along his arms, digging for the itch in his bones. “The woman,” he stresses. “Blonde. Red lips. Smokes. Smiles. She told me what you did.”

And that – makes him freeze.

“Five?” Murmurs Luther. “What’s he talking about?”

“The Handler,” he murmurs. “She’s the leader of the Commission.” Realisation dawns on his face and Klaus giggles, nodding his head eagerly. “She did this-“ he says, just as Klaus says,

“She told me!” His laughing becomes more – sad, more like a sob. “She told me, you – you fucking killed him,” he blurts, hands flying to clutch the dog tags around his neck.

Five presses his lips together. “You time travelled,” he says.

“And you killed him.”

“When did you go?”

Klaus runs one shaking a hand down his face.

“Five?” Urges Allison, confused, and Five ignores them all.

“Klaus, what did she tell you?” He insists, stepping closer.

“Why did you kill him?” Klaus whispers, looking over his shoulders, but he was still too high to see ghosts – to see Dave.

“Who, Klaus? Who?”

“Dave.” He whispers it carefully, voice trembling.

“Who?”

“Dave,” he repeats, louder, hunching his shoulders. “Dave Katz. David.” His thumb strokes the name engraved on his dog tags and he looks down at them. “Vietnam, nineteen-sixty-eight. Dave Katz. And you killed him.”

Five’s eyebrows furrows. He takes a step forwards. “Klaus, I never went to Vietnam when I was with the Commission.”

“Liar.”

“I didn’t kill Dave-“

“Liar!” Klaus cries out, forcing him to freeze on the spot. “You’re a liar! She fucking showed me! Again and again and again and you shot him!”

“No, I didn’t,” insisted Five. “Klaus, seriously, listen to me – The Handler is dangerous. She lies to get what she wants. Whatever she showed you wasn’t real-“

“I saw him die!” Klaus yells, voice breaking. “I saw you kill him! Over and over again! And now – now I can’t even see his ghost, because he’ll just – he’ll just be stuck, following you, because you fucking murdered him.”

Five looks a little guilty at that, looking down at his feet, but he shakes his head. “Klaus, I never went to Vietnam. I wasn’t there at all; who she showed you wasn’t me. The book – Vanya didn’t write that one, she didn’t say those things, and the drugs weren’t planted by us, Klaus. Come on, come sit down and we can talk-“

“I didn’t – I didn’t just hallucinate all of this,” Klaus laughs wetly, shaking his head. “Fuck you. Fuck you.” He hates the way they are all just – closing in on him, inching their way closer and closer to him, trapping him against the wall. He needs out. The anger at them all fades to that hollowness in his chest, aching and painful, and he just – gives up, there.

“Klaus –“ Insists Five, coming closer, and Klaus stumbles to the side.

“Klaus, come on,” Ben pleads. “Listen to them, listen to what they’re saying.”

Klaus wants Dave more than anything, but now he isn’t so sure he wants to see him. Not if he’s stuck haunting Five, scared and in pain and mindless.

He turns, and he sees his broken window, and then looks back at his siblings. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, voice low. “You don’t have to care, this time. It’s fine. Just – leave me alone.”

He turns, and he hurries for his window, clambering out of it clumsily, broken glass digging into his skin. Before his siblings can hurry after him, he all but tumbles down the fire escape. He staggers, balancing himself in the alleyway, and then he turns and runs, bare feet ponding against the floor.

He doesn’t know where he’s going.

He just runs, and runs, and runs.

###

His feet carry him to an alleyway. A shadowy figure stands at the end.

He approaches them, trembling, hopeful, desperate.

“I want – I want Dave back,” he says, voice hoarse.

Red lips spread in a grin; the woman turns to face him, smoke clouding across her face. “I can help with that.”

###

They wander down the dark streets, side by side, like old friends.

“What happened?” She asks, feigning concern that he lets himself believe. “Are they liars?” She asks. “All of them? I thought so.”

“I just want Dave back,” Klaus murmurs, teeth chattering. He wraps his arms around himself. Ben follows them like a shadow, silent, lips pressed together.

“We can do that, sweetheart,” drawls the woman, resting a hand on his shoulder and guiding him on. “That book, it was horrible, wasn’t it? They made you seem crazy. Have been for weeks.”

“I just want Dave,” he echoes quietly, and the woman squeezes his shoulder.

They keep wandering the dark streets of the city and Klaus doesn’t pay much attention to where they are before Klaus realises the walls around them are torn and crumbling. He looks the abandoned place around with confusion, stones digging painfully into his feet.

“Why are we-“

“The book was mean, but… it wasn’t all wrong, was it?” The woman says, and Klaus frowns.

“What?”

She tips her head to the side and reaches a hand up to caress his cheek. “It was cruel, sure, but it… wasn’t wrong, Klaus. That doesn’t mean you’re bad, of course not. But… life hasn’t been good to you. Aren’t you tired?”

Klaus blinks at her, muddy mind struggling to wrap around what she’s saying.

“Klaus, you need to leave,” Ben says, looking disgusted with the woman. “Seriously, don’t listen to her.”

“How long have you been running for?” She asks. “Ever since you were a kid. From the ghosts, from your father. From all the mean people on the streets, from everything you were scared off; from the truth that… it was never meant to get better for you, was it?”

“W-what?” Klaus stammers. She gives him a sad smile.

“Life has been cruel to you. Dave was the only good thing you had and your brother took him away from you. Sometimes… some people just aren’t meant to be happy.”

Klaus cradles Dave’s dog tags, emptiness spreading throughout his chest, and…

She’s not saying anything new to him. Of course he’s thought that, when things keep getting worse and worse for him. It’s just… hard to truly accept, but he’s always been a coward to the truth.

“Klaus, don’t fucking listen to her-“

“But Dave made you happy. You know how you can see him again.”

Klaus knows what she means, but he still recoils slightly. She quirks an eyebrow, and her eyes flick back to something. When he follows her gaze, he sees an old mattress set up on the floor. At least it would be more comfortable than the floor.

“You… you set this up?”

“It’ll be inconspicuous. Gentle. Easy. Peaceful.”

It’s a quiet area of the city, she’s right. The city lights filter in, giving the place a soft glow. It’s a place Klaus would have liked to stay in while he was on the streets, safe and alone.

“I don’t… have anything,” he murmurs, voice hardly more than a whisper.

“You’re in luck; I came prepared.”

She nudges him forwards and he goes on, staggering towards the mattress. He lowers himself down onto it, legs crossed, before he stretches them out. The woman follows him, crouching down beside the mattress. She hums to herself, pulling something out of the pockets of her skirt. A lighter flicks on and the flame makes him flinch.

“Klaus, please, please, don’t,” Ben begs, sounding horrified. Klaus doesn’t feel scared. It feels like facing something that was inevitable, that was always going to happen one way or another.

She flicks her fingers against the syringe in her grasp, and then she pulls the ribbon from her neck. Klaus holds the syringe for her as she ties the ribbon around his bicep, pulling it tight until his veins pop, and then she takes the syringe back.

“Klaus, seriously – she’s lying, she wrote that version of Vanya’s book, she planted the drugs, she lied about Five-“

“Dave’ll be there?”

She smiles. “Dave’ll be there, and your family will get what they deserve, hmm?”

The last part… doesn’t sit right with him. But there is a needle pressing against his skin and – it was inevitable, right?

He is tired – so tired. He tried, too, for so long. He just wants his chance to rest, now, with Dave.

“Klaus, please,” Ben cries.

Klaus watches the needle sink into his skin, and he lets it. The woman pushes down on the plunger, and the rush comes within moments. He feels himself sinking, as if his body is slipping loose on his bones, and the woman keeps pushing the plunger down, down, down, and then she helps push him onto his back on the mattress.

Klaus’ consciousness swims, pulsing, and the woman’s face fades in and out above him. Fingers card through his hair and red lips stretch out in a smile that goes on for eternity.

“You did great,” she says. “Thanks for the help.”

Klaus couldn’t respond if he wanted to; words hardly registering in his brain.

“Just took a bit of studying, you know? A bit of homework, but it was easy to figure out which one of you lot were the weak link of the family. And look at you; so naïve, so easily mislead. So quick to believe everything a stranger tells you.” She clicks her tongue, sitting back on her heels. Whenever Klaus’ head lolls to the side, she tips it back so he’s staring up at the ceiling.

“Watching how you relied on a little bit of kindness from a stranger. Watching how your siblings interacted with you; I just had to watch.” She pats his cheek as his eyelids flutter and his tongue works in his mouth, lungs stuttering in his chest. Ben might be telling him to breathe. He isn’t quite sure. “Shouldn’t take long for someone to find you; just a little too long. Thanks for helping me get the last word in, huh?” She grins, squeezes his cheeks, and then she stands up and is gone.

The high is amazing. Klaus struggles to comprehend how he could have ever felt bad at all when something this incredible existed in the world. His troubles didn’t exist; they melted into complete nothingness. The emptiness in his chest was filled and everything was just – perfect.

The world fades in and out, consciousness never quite remaining within his grasp, but sometimes he finds it coming back to him, if only for fleeting moments. There is one moment he hears someone saying breathe, perhaps, or something like it, and he realises he isn’t. His chest burns, but he doesn’t feel scared. Nonetheless, he inhales raggedly, gasping, and coughs the air back out, and the person near him seems to like that, encouraging him to keep doing it – and then they are shouting, telling him to do it again, and time must have slipped away from him and he gasps again.

He drifts away again, and then back, just in time to gasp a few times before drifting away once more. That person is always there, encouraging him when he breathes, telling him to turn onto his side, but he can’t manage to make himself move – it doesn’t even feel like he has a body.

Maybe he should have, though. When he coughs again something catches it in his throat. He gasps, but the air won’t come down his throat, and he splutters and gasps and gags. The person yells at him to turn over, but his voice rings in his ears and he isn’t entirely sure he is even awake.

###

“It was the fucking Commission.”

“Five, what the hell just happened?” Diego demands, looking out the window at Klaus’ retreating form, disappearing into the shadows.

“The Commission,” Five hisses, running a hand through his hair. “Christ. I said they might be watching us but it’s been so long – I didn’t think they’d come now, and not like this.”

“What do you mean?” Luther asks, thoroughly confused.

“The Handler; the leader of the Commission. She must have found Klaus at some point; gotten into his head, planted evidence to make it look like we were against him. She wants to ruin him – us. We need to go after him, now-“

“Wait, wait,” Allison says, holding up a hand. “What did he mean about that Dave? About Vietnam?”

Five purses his lips. “During the apocalypse week, Klaus got kidnapped by Hazel and Cha-Cha. He stole their briefcase, the time-traveling device, and went somewhere; Vietnam, nineteen-sixty-eight, I guess. He… was needed here for the apocalypse, or he was messing with the timeline, so the Commission must have sent someone to do something to force him back to our timeline. They killed his friend, and The Handler must have told him I did it during my time with them.”

“Oh, god,” murmurs Vanya, staring out the window with a frown. Five nods his head.

“Now, come on. He might run into her again out there now, or he might do something stupid himself.”

The implication that he is in danger is enough for them.

“Look in alleys, in motels, in abandoned places; he could be anywhere,” says Diego when they exit onto the streets. “He was hurt and high, though. He couldn’t have gone far.”

There is a whole city they need to explore. A whole city full of buildings and alleys and dumpsters he could have disappear into. It would be impossible to find him quickly; not quickly enough, Diego fears.

They split up into groups, and Diego joining Five as they quickly cover the closest areas.

“We saw him getting worse,” murmured Diego, bitter and tense. “For weeks. And we didn’t do anything.”

“We didn’t think anything was wrong,” mutters Five.

“We should have.”

“We should have,” he agrees, sighing. “Let’s just hurry up.”

Diego hopes Ben is there with him, but even at that it didn’t seem as if Klaus would listen to him either.

He can only hope for the best.

It is him and Five who find him first. They almost leave; the building they search deadly silent and empty, but there, in one room; the faint sound of gasping. It could be anything; anyone, but…

Diego has heard that sound before with Klaus, and his blood runs cold because there, at the end of the room, there is a mattress with a twitching body on it.

The sight never fails to freeze Diego. Klaus, discarded from society, thrown aside in some shitty, run down building, as if the world has just tossed him aside and forgotten about him. It makes him feel sick. But Five tugs his arm and they rush forwards into motion.

Klaus has stopped gasping by the time they reach his side. His eyes are half-open, staring into nothingness, glossy and unfocused. His lips are tinged blue, his skin pale, and his hands twitch uselessly over his chest as choked noises slip from his throat.

There is a black ribbon tied around his arm, and an empty syringe next to him.

Five stares at their brother with wide eyes, looking like a deer in the headlights – looking young – and completely frozen, so Diego reaches out, hating how – familiar this is to himself. He grabs Klaus and pulls him onto his side, and then he shakes Five with one hand. “Hold him up,” he snaps, and Five blinks at him for a moment, suddenly looking young and afraid before his expression hardens and he does as he was told; leaning forwards to hold Klaus in position.

Diego changes his focus. He opens Klaus’ mouth, and sticks his fingers down his throat. His brother jerks, body twitching, eyelids fluttering, and Five holds him up as he throws up over the side of the mattress and then gasps.

“You’ve done this before,” Five mutters, watching him carefully. Sighing, Diego nods, and presses his fingers against Klaus’ neck to feel for his brother’s pulse.

“I’ve seen him like this too many times.” His eyes flick up to the window and he digs a hand into his pocket and shoves some loose change at Five. “Go to the payphone and phone the others. We need Luther to carry him back, or get him into a car. He – probably doesn’t have long. Go.”

Five swallows, looking lost, and then he disappears to the payphone. A minute passes and then he’s back by his side.

“What can I do?”

“We just need to get him home,” Diego murmurs, looking down at Klaus. Their brother is entirely unresponsive, sprawled out awkwardly as they hold him on his side in case he is sick again; his pale blue lips parted to inhale infrequently, short and shallow breaths. Occasionally his eyelids flutter, either opening further or falling shut as he swims in and out of consciousness, though never fully aware.

His breathing is… not ideal, but he is still breathing, so Diego tries to focus on the positives. It doesn’t take much longer for a car to pull up outside and Five calls for Luther’s attention as he clambers out of it. He hurries inside, Allison and Vanya remaining inside the vehicle.

“Shit,” mutters Luther, hurrying into the room and freezing at the sight of Klaus in front of them.

“Careful,” Diego mutters when he crouches down, slipping his arms beneath him. Klaus lets out a small noise when he is lifted up. His arms fall limp by his side and his head rolls back over Luther’s arm, neck stretching, and Diego is quick to support it when he sees the way his eyes roll.

They lay him out over their legs in the car with no other space, and Diego keeps an eye on the shallow rise and fall of his chest and keeps trying to shake Klaus awake; shaking his shoulders, tapping his cheeks, but he doesn’t react at all to his attempts.

His chest rises; it falls. Rises; falls. Rises; falls – and it doesn’t rise again. Diego sits up a little, intensely focused on the rhythm Klaus had adopted for his breathing and hyperaware of him falling out of it.

“Klaus,” he says, shaking his shoulders. He ducks his head down to his mouth, trying to listen for breathing or gurgling, but he simply doesn’t make a noise. He presses his finger against his neck, searching quickly for his pulse, and then Luther leans forwards to Five in the driving seat and says,

“Hurry up, Five.”

Five steps on it.

They arrive at the Academy in record time, and Luther rushes inside with Klaus in his arms. Grace is in the infirmary already, waiting for them and not surprised at all when Luther comes in and lays a boneless, unresponsive Klaus down on the bed; she simply gets to work, injecting him with naloxone. She fusses around him, working swiftly and precisely, and Diego almost falls into a chair with relief when he hears Klaus breathing again.

Eventually, everyone else begins to relax, too; sinking into chairs around the infirmary, watching Klaus carefully. He remained unconscious, unresponsive on the bed, a thin shin of sweat appearing on his body as withdrawals hit quickly, thanks to the medication Grace administered.

To see him as he had been, Diego thinks it is a shock to everyone else, as if they were seeing a side to him they never had before. The overdose – Diego had seen Klaus in that situation before. The trashed room – Diego had seen that before, though not typically down with the same mindless desperation as before, always focused on finding drugs or money. The hurt, though – that, Diego was not familiar with. Klaus always wore a carefully constructed mask and he never managed to peek beneath it, until now.

He wonders how much of him belied it that was the drugs and the manipulation, and how much of him truly did believe what he had been told.

They have been trying to be a better family, and it scares Diego, a little bit, to think that they have failed so spectacularly.

###

Klaus wakes up.

That in itself is shocking enough. He’s certain the last thing he remembers was expecting to not wake up again, and being – eager, almost. In one way, he had been.

His body aches and his head spins in a way that screams withdrawals at Klaus, and he curls tighter in on himself, settling one hand on his unsettled stomach as it rolls and throws a riot in his body.

“Klaus? Are you awake?”

He pries his eyes open with tremendous effort. He is… in the infirmary. Ben hurries to his side, of course; Ben is always by his side.

“Klaus, how do you feel?” He asks, frowning, eyebrows furrowed. “Are you okay?”

Klaus swallows dryly, eyes flicking around the place in confusion, his mind working sluggishly. “My… stomach hurts,” he mumbles, tongue heavy in his mouth. Ben huffs, offering a small smile.

“You’ll be alright,” he says, voice soft, and Klaus lets his eyes slip shut for all of two seconds before someone else is harassing him.

“Hey, bro,” says Diego, coming up to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Horrible, really; skin crawling over his bones, electrified, craving a thousand things to make the world disappear, and he feels exhausted and sick, and contemplates for a moment if he’s about to throw up over the side of the bed onto Diego’s shoes.

Then it hits him.

Diego is here. A glance around him proves that everyone else is, too, all looking concerned and worried, slightly relieved to see him up, but – they’re all worried. For him. He is in the infirmary. He thought…

Eyebrows furrowing, Klaus looks back up at Diego. “What happened?”

“The Handler wanted you dead.”

Five stands up quickly, face deadpan, jaw tense, and Allison gives him a look at his unfiltered outburst. Klaus eyes him, slow mind taking a while to catch up with the whole situation. He remembers the abandoned building, and the way the woman had tied a ribbon around his arm to make his veins pop, and he remembers her saying odd things at the end, though he couldn’t quite make out what she had been saying.

“What?”

“The woman you met and spoke to,” Five states, coming up to stand in front of him in the bed, resting one hand on the railing. “The Handler. She’s the leader of the Commission I worked for; who tried to bring about the apocalypse. I thought she’d try and attack us again, but I thought it would have been earlier, in a different way. She wanted to hurt us and – she did that through you.”

Klaus blinks at him. “She said-“

“It doesn’t matter what she said, Klaus,” says Five, an intensity burning in his eyes. “She lied. She lied so you wouldn’t trust us, so she could have you where she wanted you. She – Klaus, she tried to kill you. If we hadn’t found, you would have been dead now.”

Klaus blinks again, tired. That was the whole point of it. He could have been with Dave now, he could have found peace, or something close to it; the closest thing Klaus was allowed to get.

Behind Five there is a hoard of ghosts. He runs his eyes over each one of them, each of their scared faces, but still he cannot see Dave. “I’m not,” he mumbles, something in his chest sinking and his eyes fall closed. “Why – why can’t you just let me have this?” He mumbles, shaking his head slightly.

“Why couldn’t we just let you die?” Five rephrases, and Klaus presses his lips together.

“Five,” murmurs Allison standing up as his temper flares up. She comes close, urging him to step aside, and she retrieves a couple of things from somewhere else.

“Klaus, you – mentioned Vanya’s book.”

Klaus’ face screws up and he nods.

“Can you open your eyes, please?”

It takes him several moments, but he manages to do so. In Allison’s hands she holds two identical books; two copies of Vanya’s books. Klaus shifts on the bed, trembling arms pushing himself up slowly. Allison holds out one of the books. “This is Vanya’s book. The real book.” She holds up the other one. “We found this one in your bedroom. It’s not real, Klaus. Five says that The Handler could have easily edited this version of it and planted it in your room, along with the drugs. You can read both of them and see the differences.”

Klaus frowns, reaching out and taking both books and staring at them. The covers are identical, the backs are identical.

One book titles Klaus’ chapter as The Junkie, one of them isn’t. One of them is – not nice, but one of them is horrible. The books aren’t the same. Klaus closes the books and runs a hand through his hair stressfully, shaking his head.

“I don’t – I-“

“It would have taken the Commission hardly a day to write that,” states Five. “They could have done it easily. The Handler can freeze time; she could have come in here at any moment without us noticing to plant anything. She didn’t get the apocalypse to happen; she was mad. She wanted to hurt us, and she thought she could use you to do that.”

Klaus stares at the books on his lap with wide eyes, and then he looks down at the bruise on the crook of his elbow where the needle had went in. He doesn’t want to believe it all, for a moment. If he does, then he’ll have to accept that he’s been acting crazy for weeks, but he believed it all entirely and he felt as if he had been pushed to the edge and then shoved over it.

So, okay. The book is fake. The drugs were planted by the Commission. He can wrap his mind around that, he can accept that, but…

“Dave,” he says, turning to look at Five. “She showed me him – dying. Again, and again, and she showed me you shooting him.”

“Klaus, I was never in Vietnam,” Five insists, shaking his head and stepping closer again. “I never went to Vietnam once. There were… hundreds of agents working there. It could have been any one of them. Did you see my face? The tattoo?”

Klaus pauses. “No, but-“

“It wasn’t me. I’m sorry they killed Dave, but I didn’t do it.”

Klaus slumps in the bed, eyes fluttering closed. He never looked at Five’s face, nor did he look for his tattoo, but it made sense. Of course it did. But if everything else was lie, then that could be it. Right?

Klaus lifts his hands up to cover his face, inhaling raggedly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought-“

“It’s okay,” Diego hurries to say. “It’s okay. We thought the Commission was going to come – we should have noticed and done something. It’s alright. We’re all good, right? You’re gonna have to go through withdrawals again – we threw out everything we found in the house – but we’re all here for you. Right?”

“Of course,” says Vanya, and the others all come close as well now.

“We should have spoken up when we noticed something was wrong,” says Luther, looking ashamed with himself. “But we didn’t, and we let you get hurt and we almost lost you. I’m sorry – we all are.”

Klaus stares at him, shocked, something warm unfurling under his skin. He never really considered how his family would react to his death – didn’t care, in the end – but he assumed they would either not care or they would even be relieved. They would put a mask on, have an obligatory funeral for him, be upset that their chance to talk to Ben was gone, but then they would move on suspiciously quickly. Now…

Did The Handler think she could ruin the family simply by killing Klaus?

That his death would affect them so much?

Maybe it would.

The past five months for Klaus have been… hard. The past one even worse, but even as the family began to grow together again, slowly but surely, Klaus had remained some distance from them, kept them at arms-length, kept his walls up and convinced himself that what they meant was they were all to be a family again – with the exception of Klaus. They were only tolerating him because he could manifest Ben. Not because he was included in their idea of a family. The drug use was inevitable, like it always was, and it didn’t matter anyway; they didn’t expect him to get sober, they just expected him to be able to manifest Ben, and he did, and that was all they needed him for.

Turns out, he was wrong.

“Christ, come here.”

Diego leans over the bed, pulling him into a tight hug that sees Allison joining it, then Vanya, then Luther, then, sort of, Five. Klaus gives Ben a look that makes the ghost shake his head.

“If you manifest me right now, I’ll slap you,” he warns light-heartedly. “You need to save your energy.”

He’s right about that, of course, so Klaus nods and tries to return the awkward group hug as it lasts and maybe, maybe he can be a little better. Maybe he deserves better, too.

The drugs go, and they stay away. Which is good. He wants to be sober now, he thinks. It just means that his sleeping suffers because of it, but still. He’s sober. When the cravings hit, he deigns to go annoy one of his siblings, and they can typically tell when he’s just being annoying or when he’s being annoying because he needs a distraction and they give him one, be it Vanya and her violin, or Allison and her makeup, or Luther, who has started knitting; Diego talks him through it or they exercise, and he and Five go out on coffee runs or Klaus lets him ramble to him.

But night comes and maybe Five didn’t kill Dave, but he does in his nightmares now, again and again and again, and sometimes he doesn’t even need to be asleep to see it happen.

He’s trying to get better. Properly. Without the drugs at night to sleep and the assumptions he is the family exception to being part of the family and without the horrible, fake book of Vanya’s, and he opens up a little more, since it seems he blurted out about Dave and Vietnam and that was during the war, Klaus, what happened?

He might be getting a bit better, if one doesn’t count the nightmares and flashbacks and the eternal grief over Dave since he watches him die nearly every day. He chips away at the doubts that blossomed during the time The Handler meddled with him, and the paranoia that came from the realisation that she was watching him for – months. Years, even, since she can time travel.

It’s… much nicer than he would admit, being able to talk to and trust his siblings; to actually feel cared about. To be able to laugh with them, as the time goes on. It truly is nice, but still; everything boils down to just one moment.

It happens nearly eight months after the not-apocalypse.

The siblings have made a big effort recently to better understand his time in Vietnam. It’s… nice. Not so nice when they call him out on having PTSD from it, but the general care is nice, and he finds it helps a little to talk about it.

Of course, he doesn’t tell them about the grisly details. Doesn’t tell them about the people he killed, doesn’t tell them about the bodies blown apart by mines, or the guys with legs torn apart by punji traps; doesn’t tell them anything about that.

He tells them the squad stories he and his friends discussed in the bars, slipping back into those moments, picking up the old language they used as he retells the stories with the boyish, camaraderie energy they had, and his siblings like it. He cooks them Vietnamese dishes for dinner, sometimes, or Grace does, and he talks about how John, this stoic-faced adult version of Five, had passed out getting the squad tattoos.

Diego, at some point, remembered that veteran bar they went to a lifetime ago, when Dave had just died (for the first time) and he had come back with a box of stuff – not originals, of course, they wouldn’t give him those, but he had copies of photographs and newspaper clippings and patches. He had been hesitant, uncertain on whether it would either trigger Klaus or make him upset, remind him of bad times, but Klaus had honestly been happy to see them, and his siblings seemed happy to sit around the living room and listen to him talk about it all, coming close to look at the photos he gestures to.

“Oh,” he says, pulling one photo out. It’s the one he had cried over with Diego; one with Dave and him side by side in it, along with the rest of his squad, stuck in a grainy, blurry image. He pauses, expression faltering.

“Klaus?” Asks Allison, voice soft, and he puts his smile back on.

“This one – this is Dave,” he murmurs gently, running his fingers down the picture. His gaze lingers on it for a moment before he turns it around and shows everyone, almost proudly, pointing at Dave. “That’s Dave. We were moving then, heading out the city, stopped off there for a while.” He pulls the photo back to himself, glancing up at everyone (they still seem shocked whenever they see him in these photos, and he doesn’t blame them – Klaus, in an army uniform, clutching a rifle, it’s an odd sight) “And we got yelled at, because we took the sleeves off our jackets, Sarge made us do push ups for it and he said-“

“Told us there were no donut dollies out there and no one gave a damn about my biceps or your noodle arms.”

Klaus –

Freezes.

The voice chills him to the bone and simultaneously chases that ever-present chill away. It rings clear and then continues to ring in his ears and he feels a little dizzy.

“Klaus?” Asks Luther, sounding a little concerned.

Klaus puts down the photo on the table and then he turns his head to the doorway.

Standing there in his stupid sleeveless jacket is Dave, a lopsided smirk on his face that turns into a wide grin that he can’t stop when he meets Klaus’ eyes. A sound escapes Klaus’ throat and his body goes tense, rigid, and then he shoots up like a spring and he runs.

His powers are still iffy at best, now, but they prove faithful when he throws himself at Dave and doesn’t hit the floor, but instead all bust slams against his chest with enough force that the soldier stumbles backwards, huffing. One of Dave’s hands settle on the back of his head, running through his hair, and the other settles on his back, hugging him close. From behind him, there is an audible gasp from his siblings.

“Hey there, doll,” murmurs Dave, and Klaus curls his hands tighter in his shirt.

“You bastard,” he sobs. “You fucking bastard.” He raises a hand, slapping his shoulder and then lifts his head so he can look at him and his wide grin.

“I love you too,” Dave says, and Klaus laughs wetly and drops his head back down onto his shoulder.

After several moments spent just clinging onto Dave, shoulders trembling, Klaus turns around to face his siblings and swipes at his eyes. With a grin, he says, “this is Dave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pls, I'd love to hear some thoughts <3


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